We have made contact with the Ascham school by E-mail. (Judith Butcher [jbutcher@ascham.nsw.edu.au])

Information

We contacted with the school by sending them an E-mail. The Ascham school is looking forward seeing us.

Discription of the school

The Ascham school has DALTON education and is only for girls. We will do research about the differences between the education in the Netherlands and Australia.

Preparation

We filled in a document for the visa (http://www.immi.gov.au/Visas/Pages/417.aspx). This visa costs 400 dollars.A travel agency has arranged our first week in Australia. While we are there, we will arrange a place to sleep. At school we attended a few classes to brush up our English. (Katholieke PABO Zwolle).

The internship

The Ascham school is a private school and all the children have rich parents. The school has its own tennis court, swimming pool, private music lessons and there are many expert teachers in the school. There are many differences between the education in the Netherlands and Australia. In Australia they work with laptops in the lessons and they work in groups. The children have discipline to work hard for school and they have many homework. These differences help you develop your own teaching style.

You get possibilities to teach but there are high expectations. The language is a small issue. In the beginning it is hard to say everything correctly in English but you learn it during the internship.

Living in Sydney

Sydney is a vast city compared to any other city in the Netherlands. To my surprise, the people that live in Sydney are very kind en helpful. Usually in large cities people are very individual minded and not really bothered by their surroundings. In several occasions i got help before I even asked for it! Public transportation is very well organised and in terms of costs it's comparable with the Netherlands. It's rather hard to find suitable and affordable accomodation though.

Financials

accomodation: Normally they ask €170 per week. But there are posibilities to get a cheaper accomodation.